Unexpected Dismounts

by Nancy Rue

  “My granddaddy was in one of them,” he said. “Them places is nasty.”

  “My point exactly,” Chief said. He grinned at Desmond, who grinned back, shyly, timidly, and every other adverb that had never matched the boy before. Not when it came to Chief.

  “There are some excellent facilities covered by your insurance,” the woman said.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” I said.

  “Barbara Bush. And spare me the jokes. I’ve heard them all.”

  Yeah, Chief had definitely sucked the delight out of this conversation.

  “Ms. Bush, just so I’m clear, why is it that Chief—Mr. Ellington—has to go to a rehab facility?”

  “Rehab?” Desmond said. “He ain’t on drugs. You ain’t, right, Chief?”

  “Physical rehabilitation. That leg is not going to be completely healed and usable if he doesn’t have physical therapy.”

  “Can he do it as an outpatient?” I said.

  “Yes, but he can’t drive himself there. He can’t see to his basic needs. With no one else residing with him—”

  “What if he stayed at my house?” I said.

  To be honest, it wasn’t me who said it. My mouth was used, but the words totally came from someone else.

  I had never seen Chief look dumbfounded before. But his frozen-in-the-unexpected face was no match for the expression on Desmond’s. He looked as if I were coming after him with a hypodermic needle. Yeah, we were going to Sonic, and we were staying there until I got out of him whatever was eating him up. I mean, for Pete’s sake, I was inviting his idol to be accessible to him 24/7.

  “Classic.”

  I turned to Chief. He was beckoning me over with both hands. When I reached his side, he put his hand on the back of my head and pulled me close to his face, as if neither my twelve-year-old nor the First Lady of Social Work was in the room.

  “Are you sure about this?” he said. I could feel his breath on my mouth.

  “It was a Nudge,” I said.

  He studied my eyes before he turned his head toward the woman still waiting with her clipboard.

  “Start the paperwork,” he said.

  I expected her to quiz me about whether I was really willing to cart him to physical therapy every day, see that he was bathed … oh, sheesh, bathed? But she just clicked her pen and stood up and said, “I think you can handle him.”

  That wasn’t the problem. I wasn’t sure I could handle me. This was God’s idea, so God better know what God was doing.

  “Hey, Big Al,” Desmond said when the woman had bustled out to fill in forms. “I’m feelin’ faint. I think I need to visit the vending machine.”

  “Get me something too,” Chief said.

  I gave Desmond a handful of change and pondered his exit.

  “He doesn’t want to talk to me,” Chief said.

  I perched on the edge of the bed. “Then it’s not just me. I don’t know what’s going on with him. Well, I know why he’s freaked out around me. I haven’t even had a chance to tell you this.”

  I filled him in on both Priscilla Sanborn’s visit and the one from Vickie Rodriguez.

  “We have to go to court now, and she says I need somebody to represent me.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Chief said.

  “You just came out of a coma.”

  “I said I’ll take care of it. Unless you don’t trust me, now that I’m nursing-home material.”

  I loved the mischief in his eyes. But, then, what didn’t I love about him? Except the fact that he wasn’t pulling me into his arms this very minute.

  “Of course, I trust you,” I said. “I just don’t want you to take on more than you should right now.”

  “Classic. Enough.” He touched my arm. “If you want to get in somebody’s business, find out what’s going on with Desmond. You might start with the elephant that’s in the middle of the room.”

  “You mean Priscilla.”

  “That. And what he remembers from the accident.”

  “He says he doesn’t remember anything, but, Chief, he never lost consciousness.”

  “Is he drawing?”

  “Not that much. Oh—” I told him about the silhouette, and about my conversation with Ms. Willa, and about the cops going to Sacrament House. I thought I knew how much I’d missed him, but I’d only known the half of it.

  “You’re tired,” I said when I was almost hoarse. “Get rest. And eat healthy. And do what they tell you.”

  “I may want to rethink staying with you,” he said.

  “You have no idea,” I said.

  Desmond decided he didn’t want to go to Sonic. His excuse was that he filled up on a Snickers bar and couldn’t do an order of cheese fries justice. I didn’t have to be a brain surgeon to know he didn’t want to be confined with me in a space he couldn’t get out of. So when we got home, I didn’t let him out of the kitchen.

  “Okay, Clarence,” I said after I’d ordered him to the bistro chair. “Here’s what I’m thinking, and I could be wrong, but I know you’ll set me straight if I am.”

  He looked at me suspiciously, but he nodded.

  “I’m going to talk first and you’re going to sit there, but after that, feel free to move about the cabin.”

  “Huh?”

  “The kitchen.” I swiveled in the chair so I wasn’t looking him directly in the eye. “I think you’re freaked out because that woman who showed up here in the beige car is your aunt Priscilla.”

  “She ain’t my aunt,” he said.

  “She’s your mother’s sister,” I said. “That makes her your aunt.”

  “That don’t make her family. You and Mr. Chief and Miss Hankenstein and all them? That’s my family. She can’t take me.”

  “So you’ve already figured out that’s why she came here. To try to stop me from adopting you.”

  “She can’t,” he said again, with even more authority, “’cause my bi-o-logical mother left a letter. It’s final.”

  “That’s what we’re hoping for,” I said. “Chief is still going to—”

  For the first time in the conversation, fear flashed through his eyes. “Mr. Chief s’posed to make sure it happens?”

  “He’s our lawyer,” I said slowly. “And he loves you.”

  “He can’t!”

  Desmond sprang out of the chair and was headed I wasn’t sure even he knew where. I grabbed a handful of sweatshirt and pulled him back until I could get him by both shoulders.

  “Desmond, he’s okay. He can do this.”

  “He ain’t gonna want to! Not after he remembers!”

  “Remembers what?”

  “That I made that accident happen!”

  He struggled to get free, but I held on.

  “Tell me what you mean,” I said.

  “You won’t want me neither if I do.”

  “Are you serious?” I shook him. “It wouldn’t make any difference to me if you held up the Walmart. You are my son. Bottom line. Now talk to me.”

  He went so limp I had to plant him back in the chair, where he stared dismally at the salt and pepper shakers.

  “Start from the beginning,” I said. “Desmond?”

  “I was all freakin’ out ’cause that woman came here.”

  “Priscilla,” I said.

  “Yeah. I know you say we ain’t s’posed to use the H-word.”

  “The H-word.”

  “Hate.”

  “Oh, that one. Right.”

  “One time, she said she’d take me and my mama to the clinic ’cause we both sick. This when we was livin’ with my granddaddy, and he was too sick to take us hisself.”

  “So you were about, what, seven, maybe?”

  He
held up his hand, fingers fanned out.

  “Five,” I said.

  “But I remember it, it ain’t like I was too little. My mama, she throwin’ up in a trash can, and I was jus’ throwin’ up on myself, and she—”

  “Priscilla.”

  “Miss Prissy, I called her in my head, ’cause she always drawin’ in eyebrows on herself with a pencil and—stuff—like that. When I got older, I left out one of the letters, but you won’t let me say that word so I’m not gon’ tell you what that was.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said.

  “So she get us in the door, and she says, ‘Geneveve’”—his voice sounded remarkably like Priscilla’s—‘you go on in now, and I’ll pick you up later.’”

  “Did she have to go to work or something?” I said.

  “No,” Desmond said in falsetto. “She jus’ didn’t want nobody to see her in that place. I climbed up on a chair and look out the window, and there she was, sittin’ in her car. And there’s me with throw-up all over me.”

  I thought I might throw up myself.

  “She done stuff like that all the time. You don’t even know. But I know this: She don’t want me. Come to think about it, I ain’t even worried about her.”

  “But you were freaked out at the time,” I said.

  He looked as if he’d been caught with his hand in the Oreos.

  “That’s what you said a minute ago. You said you were all freaked out the day of the accident.”

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  It clearly wasn’t, but I let him go on.

  “So me and Mr. Chief was riding and I was all fussing over it in my mind and then I saw that car and I yelled or jerked or somethin’ and I distracted Mr. Chief like you and him always tellin’ me not to do and he didn’t see the car and he run into the pole. I coulda’ killed him, Big Al.”

  So he did remember. And from the way it was gushing out of him he hadn’t just suddenly put it all together. He’d had this in his head since the day it happened.

  “Okay, just listen to me now,” I said.

  He nodded. I noticed tiny beads of perspiration on his upper lip. I always broke into a sweat after I threw up too.

  “Chief doesn’t remember any of that, and I’m going to leave it up to you whether to tell him. But if you do, I guarantee you he isn’t going to stop loving you. Love wins out every single time. You got that?”

  “God tell you that?”

  “God tells us all that, all the time,” I said. “It’s what God’s about.”

  “He ain’t never told me nothin’.”

  I drew in air. The potential for getting this all wrong was huge.

  “Have you ever asked him anything?” I said.

  “Yeah, and he ain’t never answered, which is why I ain’t doin’ no baptism.” Desmond stopped, waited. “You not gon’ make me, are you, Big Al?”

  I shook my head. “That’s not the kind of thing you make somebody do,” I said. “That’s between you and Jesus. But I will say this: You’re not going to find out if that’s what he wants for you if you don’t talk to him.”

  He seemed to consider that, although what came out of his mouth next was, “When Mr. Chief comes here, he can stay in my place and I’ll move upstairs. He can’t be goin’ up and down them steps with his leg all messed up.”

  “Great idea,” I said.

  “His leg gon’ be a’right, ain’t it? He gon’ ride his Harley again?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  He nodded again, and then stuck up his fist to knock it against mine. “Imma start movin’ my stuff,” he said.

  I started in on a long relieved sigh, but I thought of something.

  “One more question,” I said.

  He turned from his doorway.

  “Did you see the car that Chief swerved to miss?”

  The air went dead.

  “No,” he said. His door snapped shut behind him.

  I would have felt like Claire Huckstable herself right then, getting all that information out of him and turning him around, if I didn’t know from that single syllable that there was still a piece of something stuck inside him that he wasn’t letting go of. And it was stuck inside me too.

  Monday morning came, and the moment I got back from taking Desmond to school, Bonner was there with a briefcase and a long face. It took me a minute to remember why he was there. I’d been right: A lot could happen in two days.

  My heart sagged, but I waved him in and put the kettle on. I could feel his uneasiness as he hoisted himself up to the bistro table.

  “How is Zelda?” I said.

  “Holding her own. Allison—have you decided?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Our time’s up. I don’t think Taylor has a dozen prospective buyers knocking on his door, but it isn’t fair to keep this tied up.”

  I sat across from him. “I didn’t say there was no decision. I just said I hadn’t decided.”

  “You’re losin’ me here,” he said.

  “Okay. You aren’t going to list my house because something tells you not to. I get that.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “And I don’t want to list it with anybody else because something tells me not to. Well, not just ‘something.’ It’s your integrity. The same thing that won’t let you list it.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “What if we sign the contract, saying our purchase of the house is contingent on the sale of mine. Only we don’t list it.” I put up my hand to stop his protest. “And we tell Mr. Taylor we’re not listing it. If somebody else comes along and wants to buy his place, he can sell it to them. But if this one sells, we get his for the deal that’s in the contract.”

  Bonner just stared at me.

  “It’s legal, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This way it’s up to God.”

  Bonner sat back in the high seat and watched his leg dangle.

  “What?” I said.

  “Wasn’t it up to God when you decided to sell in the first place? Wasn’t it a Nudge?”

  I opened my mouth. And then I closed it.

  “Seriously, Allison?” Bonner said.

  “I’m desperate, Bonner,” I said. “There’s just so much, so many people to save from the lives they’re living. I just have to find a way.”

  “You do? Not God?” He shook his head at me. “I thought that was what we were doing here. And you’re the reason for that. You’re the one that keeps plowing ahead on nothing but faith. And that’s it.”

  “That’s what?”

  “That’s why I can’t list this house. That’s what’s wrong. It’s not coming from God. It’s coming from you trying to second-guess God.”

  There was nothing in that I could deny. Not even the shame that burned my face.

  “If we’re going to give it to God,” he said, “I think we have to give him the whole thing. Tear up the contract. Tell Taylor we’ll buy when we can if his property is still available. If God sends somebody to buy this house, totally without advertising, then so be it. Meanwhile, there will be another way.” He pressed his hand down on mine. “There will be, Allison.”

  “Okay, Bonner,” I said. “You want tea?” I squeezed his hand. “I’m having humble pie with mine.”

  Dr. Doug Doyle said Chief would be released Sunday. He pointed out with a twinkle that that was April Fools’ Day. Yeah, well, the thing didn’t feel like a joke. Every time I thought about it, I got the shakes.

  The meeting with Vickie and Priscilla Sanborn and her attorney was scheduled for Thursday the twenty-ninth, but Chief kept reassuring me he was handling it.

  “You aren’t going to make me go in there alone, are you?” I asked on th
e morning of the twenty-eighth. “Don’t tell me you’re going to be there via Skype or some such ridiculous thing. I will fire you.”

  “Oh ye of little faith.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve hired a guy. He’s doing my legwork. In fact, if you aren’t busy, he’ll go with you this morning to meet with Stan about your bike and the insurance. “

  “And tomorrow?”

  “He’ll be with you at the meeting. I’ll be a phone call away in case he needs me. I’m still the attorney of record.”

  “Am I going to meet this person?” I said.

  “He should be here anytime.”

  “Now? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why? Did you want to have your hair done or something?” He pointed at me. “I didn’t tell you in advance because I knew you’d do what you’re doing right now.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Building a little wall around you.”

  I stared. “Do I do that?”

  “Sometimes.” His eye lines crinkled. “I enjoy taking it down, brick by brick.”

  Oh, for Pete’s sake, get a wrecking ball and let’s get on with this.

  I was still trying to catch my breath when someone tapped on the door.

  “You could have at least told me his name,” I whispered.

  But he didn’t have to. When the door swung open, Kade Capelli walked in.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The kid appeared as self-assured as he was the first time I met him. He gave no indication of caring that I’d seen him being thrown out of a prostitute’s room. Ophelia’s room. Our Ophelia. Did he actually think I wasn’t going to turn to Chief and say, Get this little jackal out of my sight?

  But on closer inspection, as he crossed the room and shook my hand to the tune of Chief’s explanation of how he’d taken my recommendation and called him, blah, blah, blah, I saw the question in Kade’s clear blue eyes: Was I going to out him or not?

  “I interviewed him right before the accident,” Chief said.

  “World’s longest wait for a job offer.” Kade was still watching me.

  “You happier now?”

  I looked at Chief.

  “Does this make you feel better?” he said. “You obviously saw something in the guy, which I did too.”